A culture vessel with an agitator is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,355,906. As noted in said patent, it is necessary to agitate a culture media containing microcarrier beads in order to maintain the beads in suspension. It is desireable to have a continuous perfusion culture system which involves removing media from the culture vessel and adjusting a parameter of the media such as its Ph or oxygen content. It may be more desireable to adjust the media in a vessel which is separate from the culture vessel. A medium recycling system and a continuous perfusion culture system requires a filter to prevent the culture from leaving the culture vessel. When a filter has been utilized heretofore for that purpose, the beads and/or cultures clog up the filter as the media is being drawn out of the vessel. As a result thereof, it was necessary to stop the agitation and allow the beads to settle out. It may under certain conditions be undesireable to stop agitation of the culture media.
The present invention is directed to a solution of overcoming the above problem whereby agitation of the culture medium need not be stopped due to filter clogging and addresses itself to solving the problem of providing a vessel which can be used in a true continuous perfusion culture system.